ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Hyung Kook Joo, Chang Hyo Kim, Jae Man Noh, Si-Hwan Kim
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 116 | Number 4 | April 1994 | Pages 300-312
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A18989
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New core-reflector boundary conditions designed to replace the explicit representation of the reflector in nodal computations are developed taking into account the transverse leakage in the reflector region. Two approximations are introduced for the transverse leakage in the reflector region: exponential approximation for the slab reflector and quadratic polynomial and exponential approximation for the L-shaped reflector. Core-reflector boundary conditions that relate net current with flux at the core-reflector interfaces are then derived by solving the transverse integrated neutron diffusion equation with transverse leakage approximations in the reflector region. To test the usefulness of new core-reflector boundary conditions, nodal expansion method computations with and without explicit representation of reflectors are performed for the core power distribution and criticality of Zion-1 and YGN-1 pressurized water reactors. It is demonstrated that core power and criticality computations with new boundary conditions agree very well with those with the reflector included explicitly in computational nodes.